Summer Learning Community: "Film as Alchemical Magick" (aka Summer Freak School)

This summer Doc Kelley (Psychedelic Sangha co-founder and part-time New School professor) is teaming up with the singer-songwriter Chris Robinson (Black Crowes, CRB) for a special “Summer Learning Community” that is being offered online to undergraduate students at The New School’s Eugene Lang College located in New York City.

In this time of distance, Summer Learning Communities are designed to bring students together online in order to study and explore a new topic or issue. Our project is to cultivate a learning community to look into the alchemical nature of select Experimental films. We’ll consider the films of Kenneth Anger, Harry Everett Smith, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brian Butler and more.

Once a week for six weeks (July-August), we will meet online to meditate, watch film clips, and discuss. Activities will include: synchronous and asynchronous meditation and film viewing, assigned readings, discussion, alchemical film creation, as well as writing and reflection. And though our online meetings are private, you can follow along by monitoring posts made to this blog with the tag “alchemical.” Each week we’ll upload a new blog post with unique prompts for specific readings, meditation instruction, and tips for viewing.

Below you’ll find our growing database of links to all the films we’ll be viewing. We hope to someday offer a similar learning experience to members of Psychedelic Sangha.

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Faculty

INSTRUCTOR: Christopher “Doc” Kelley

VISITING LECTURER: Chris Robinson

COURSE ASSISTANT: Jonathan Moodie

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Timetable of Zoom Meetings with Topics

July 8 // Orientation

July 15 // Aleister Crowley & the films of Kenneth Anger

July 22 // Mysticism in the works of Harry Everett Smith

July 29 // “Psychomagic” in the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky

August 5 // Brian Butler and company

August 12 // Student Projects

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Aleister Crowley

Primary source materials:

• Crowley, Aleister. Magick (Book 4, Part 1: Meditation)

• Crowley, Aleister. Magick (Book 4, Part 2: Theory)

• Crowley, Aleister. Magick (Book 4, Part 3: Magick in Theory and Practice)

Secondary source materials:

• Churton, Tobias. Aleister Crowley in India: The Secret Influence of Eastern Mysticism on Magic and the Occult.

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Kenneth Anger

Original Films:

• Magick Lantern Cycle:

  • Fireworks (1947)

  • Puce Moment (1949, 1970)

  • Rabbit’s Moon (1950, 1971)

  • Eaux d’Artifice (1953)

  • Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) / Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1966 “Sacred Mushroom Edition”)

  • Scorpio Rising (1964)

  • Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965)

  • Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969)

  • Lucifer Rising (1972, 1980)

• The Man We Want to Hang (2002)

• Brush of Baphomet (2009)

Supplemental Links:

• 72 hours in André Balazs’ Chateau Marmont with Kenneth Anger (2018, dir. Floria Sigismondi)

• "The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Kenneth Anger" (lecture by Christian Giudice for the Speech in Silence podcast)

• “Lucifer Over Luxor: Archaeology, Egyptology, and Occultism in Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle” by Ethan Doyle White

• “Kenneth Anger: 1966 Screening Of His Magick Lantern Cycle” by Mike Everleth

• “Magick in Theory and Practice: Ritual Use of Colour in Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother” by Deborah Allison

• “Illuminating Lucifer” by Carel Rowe

• Raising Lucifer, Part One and Part Two (2015, dir. Brian Butler)

• Lucifer Rising original soundtrack by Jimmy Page

• Kenneth Anger official site

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Harry Everett Smith

Original Films:

• Early Abstractions :

  • No. 1: A Strange Dream (1939)

  • No. 2: Message From the Sun (1941)

  • No. 3: Interwoven (1946)

  • No. 4: Manteca (1947)

  • No. 5: Circular Tensions (Homage to Oskar Fischinger) (1949)

  • No 6 (1950)

  • No. 7 (1951)

  • No. 8 (1954)

  • No. 9 (1954)

  • No. 10 (1956)

• No. 11: Mirror Animations (1956)

• No. 12: Heaven and Earth Magic (1962)

• No. 13: Oz (1962)

• No. 14: Late Superimpositions (1965)

• No. 15 (1966)

• No. 16: Oz—The Tin Woodman’s Dream (1967)

• No. 17: Mirror Animations (extended version) (1979)

• No. 18: Mahagonny (1980)

• No. 19 (1980)

• No. 20: Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1981)

• Early Abstractions :  Nos. 1–5, 7, and 10 (1939-1956)

Supplemental Links:

• The Harry Smith Archive

• “Alchemical Transformations: The Abstract Films of Harry Smith” by Jamie Sexton

• Harry Smith interviewed by P. Adams Sitney (1965)

• Harry Smith interviewed by Khem Caigan (1995)

• Harry Smith symposium at the Getty Research Institute (2001)

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Alejandro Jodorowsky

Original Films:

• The Severed Heads (1957)

• Fando & Lis (1968)

• El Topo (1970)

• The Holy Mountain (1973)

• Tusk (1980)

• Santa Sangre (1989)

• The Rainbow Thief (1990)

• The Dance of Reality (2013)

• Endless Poetry (2016)

Documentaries on Jodorowsky:

• The Jodorowsky Constellation (1994, dir. Louis Mouchet)

• Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013, dir. Frank Pavich)

Supplemental Links:

• “Jodorowsky, Alejandro” by David Church

• Alejandro Jodorowsky interviewed by Jay Babcock (1999)

• Interview and Tarot readings with Jodorowsky at MoMA (2017)

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Brian Butler and company

Original Films:

• Night of Pan (2009)

• Death Posture (2010)

• The Dove and the Serpent (2011)

• Union of Opposites (2012)

• Babalon Working (2013)

• ὕδωρ (2014)

• Vegetable Man (2015)

Live Performances:

• Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull (L’Étrange Festival 2012)

• Brian Butler’s Bartzabel Working (2012)

• Artificios (Mexico City, 2012)

• X (2015)

Supplemental Links:

• Spotlight on Artist Brian Butler (David Lynch Foundation Television, 2013)

• “Love in the Old Days” by Daddy (music video, dir. James Franco, 2013)

• “Brian Butler Conjures the Demon Bartzabel” (Vice interview, 2013)

• A Ceremony for the Evocation of Bartzabel, the Spirit of Mars

• Art, the Occult, and Neurological Realignment with Brian Butler (TheLipTV interview, 2014)

• Brian Butler Official Site

• “The Babalon Working 1946: L. Ron Hubbard, John Whiteside Parsons, and the Practice of Enochian Magic” by Henrik Bogdan

Related Films:

• The Wormwood Star by Curtis Harrington (1956)

• Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda by Ira Cohen (1968)

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